and his mother beth is with us. and she can actually describe the early evidence that he had this disease. with peter who is a phenomenal baseball player, comparable in many ways to lou gehrig, he also noticed it in his athletic performance. and to sort of complete the circle, we have with us richard finkle who is going to tell us about sma which is his specialty. and he's been taking care of griffen so he knows a great deal about him. and we have neil schnyder who say specialist in als and will give us insight, not only into the care of patients with als but also both of them are physician scientists, interested in trying to understand the mechanism of the disease in order to get therapeutic intervention for it. so we're going to learn a lot about motor neuron disease not only from people who have it but from people who study it. >> rose: let me begin with you. have you enlarge on what dr. kandel just said and give us a sense of what it's about. >> well, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, als, as we heard is a motor ne